"No, no, Albert! No, no, my dear boy!" he exclaimed. "No, no; it is very wrong--very wrong indeed! For God's sake, my friends and fellow citizens, pause! let us be wise and firm, but moderate and just. We have done great things--indeed, we have. We have recovered our freedom; we have regained those ancient laws and usages which were our blessing in the olden time, and which may bless us still, if we use them discreetly. But, fellow citizens, remember, oh, remember! there is a point where our own privileges end, and where those of other classes and other men begin. Let us not take one stride beyond the barriers of our own rights; for surely, if we do, we shall, sooner or later, be driven back with disgrace. The man who, with power to right himself, suffers another to rob him of his property, is little better than a fool; but he who, because he has once been robbed, grasps at the possessions of another, is none the less a robber himself. The nobles have their own privileges and their own laws; and right it is that they should have them; for perhaps we are less fitted, from our habits and situation, to judge them, than they are to judge us. But, setting that point aside, we claim our own laws and our own judges, and we have obtained them: the nobles, too, claim theirs, and let them have them too. If they have wronged each other, let them right themselves; and if they have wronged the state, whereby we may suffer too, let us carry up our impeachment of their conduct to the footstool of the princess, and demand that they be judged by their peers, according to law. But on no account let us either arrest them without lawful authority; and still less let us presume--a body of men superior to them in numbers, and in some sort, I will say, prejudiced against them, because we hold a lower rank than they do--and still less, I say, let us presume to judge them, when we cannot, from our very station, judge them impartially. A man can very well judge others, may be, when he despises them; but no men can judge others whom they envy. I know nothing of these two lords; and all I have heard of them makes me believe that they were good and faithful servants of their prince, so long as he was living; but if you have good reason to think that they have since betrayed their country to France, accuse them before the princess and her council, and let them be judged by their equals."
"What! and give them time to escape the pursuit of justice?" demanded Albert Maurice, sternly; but immediately assuming a softer tone, he added, "Had any other man spoken the words we have just heard, I should have instantly called upon the states of Flanders not to entertain for a moment ideas which would go to circumscribe all their powers. I would have endeavoured to show that we have a right, as the representatives of the whole of Flanders and Brabant, to defend our existence as a nation, and our general interests as a free people, by arresting any one whom we find labouring to sell us at the highest price to a foreign power; and, by making the most terrible example of such traitors, to deter others from similar treason--without adducing any weaker reasons. But to you, my uncle--my best and kindest friend--I am bound by love and gratitude; and to you also--as the oldest and most revered member of the council--the states are bound by reverence and esteem, to yield every motive which can satisfy your mind. I, therefore, as one of the provincial council of the princess, may now inform you, that one half of that council----"
"The Duke of Gueldres has signed the order," whispered Ganay, laying a parchment before the President, who instantly proceeded--"that even a majority of the council, have consented to the arrest of these two nobles, the Lord of Imbercourt and the Chancellor Hugonet; and surely, did there exist no other right in this assembly to try them for their manifold and recent offences, the warrant of three such men of their own order as the Duke of Cleves, the Duke of Gueldres,[[8]] and the Bishop of Liege, would be ample authority for such a proceeding."
As he spoke, he spread out the parchment on the table before the states; and, slowly pronouncing the names of the three princes who, from the base motives of personal ambition or revenge, had been induced to consent to such a degradation of their class, he pointed with his finger in succession to their signatures attached to the order for arresting the unfortunate nobles. Martin Fruse was silent; but the voice of every other person present was raised for the instant execution of a warrant so signed, though many, by leaving the order without any further authority, would have gladly shifted the responsibility of the act upon those princes who had justified it, in order to escape themselves from a task, for which, with all the will in the world, they wanted the necessary courage.
Albert Maurice, however, and several others, made of sterner stuff than the generality of the burghers by whom they were surrounded, had more extended views and more daring purposes, and were determined not to trust the execution of the vengeance they proposed to wreck on the two counsellors, to such doubtful friends as the Dukes of Cleves and Gueldres, and the Bishop of Liege. The first, indeed, had shown himself the bitter foe of Imbercourt from the moment he had discovered that the statesman had determined to save the country from foreign invasion, if possible, by uniting Mary of Burgundy to the heir of the French crown. To the Bishop of Liege, Imbercourt had long been a personal enemy; and the Duke of Gueldres had motives of his own, or rather motives suggested by Ganay, for seeking to alienate the unhappy minister from the councils of the princess. Each, however, of these great lords, Albert Maurice well knew, were willing to compound for the exile of the minister, and to spare his life; but the young president himself judged rightly, when he thought that Imbercourt, in power or in banishment, would never cease his efforts to execute the design he had formed, till he were dead, or the scheme accomplished; and Albert Maurice resolved that he should die. He tried hard to convince his own heart that his intentions were purely patriotic; but his own heart remained unsatisfied. Yet, having once yielded to the promptings of the worse spirit, the burning doubt in his own bosom, in regard to the purity of his motives, only urged him on the course he had chosen with more blind and furious impetuosity, in order to escape from the torturing self-examination to which conscience prompted him continually. He saw around him difficulties and dangers on every side, obstacles alike opposed to his ambition, to his love, and to his aspirations after liberty. He believed himself to be in the situation of a mariner on a narrow bank, over which the ocean threatened every instant to break, and overwhelm both himself and the vessel of the state; and he resolved at once to push off into the midst of the stormy waves, in despite of the fears of his companions, believing that his own powers could steer the ship safely, and that their feebleness must yield him the command, till he had piloted her into the port for which he had already determined to sail.
The timidity of some, the subtlety of others, the wilfulness, the self-conceit of all, he saw could only be bent to his purposes by plunging them in an ocean of difficulties, from which he alone could extricate them; and, understanding well the characters of those by whom he was surrounded, and prepared to make their talents, their influence, their wealth, their vices, their very weaknesses, subservient to his one great purpose, he resolved to involve them all in schemes of which he alone knew the extent.
At once, therefore, he rejected the idea that the warrant, signed by the three princes he had named, was sufficient; and though he allowed their names to stand first, he urged upon those who heard him, that the states must also join in the same act, or forfeit thenceforward all pretence to real power. His arguments and his authority easily brought over a large majority of the hearers; and the warrants were sent forth bearing the names of the whole assembly. A number of other persons, less obnoxious, were then, as I have before said, added to the list of those to be secured; and the meeting of the states did not break up till the fearful work of proscription had been dreadfully extended.
The assembly then rose; and member by member, bowing low to the president, who had the day before taken possession of a suite of apartments in the Stadthuys, and now made it his dwelling, left the town-hall, and departed. Ganay alone remained, and he did so on a sign to that effect from Albert Maurice; who, when all the rest were gone, and the doors closed, leaned his folded arms upon the table, and buried his brows upon them, as if utterly exhausted with all the fatigues of the day, and the struggle of many a potent passion in the arena of his own bosom. The dull flames of the long-burnt lamps but dimly illumined the wide vacant hall and its dark wainscot; but the great cresset hung just above the head of Albert Maurice; and as the light fell upon the bright curls of dark hair dropping over his arms, and upon the magnificent head and form which those curls adorned, it seemed shining upon some fallen spirit, in the first lassitude of its despair. Nor did the withered form of Ganay, with his shrewd keen eyes fixed upon the young citizen, and his cheek shrunk and pale with the long workings of passions, concealed by subtlety, but not the less potent on that account, offer a bad image of some dark tempter, enjoying his triumph over the fall of a better being, then writhing before his eyes under the very fruition of its first evil hopes.
It was Ganay who began the discourse, and the tone of his voice at once roused Albert Maurice from his momentary absence of mind. "They have all plunged in now, indeed!" said the druggist. "I thought not they would run before our will so easily."
"They have plunged in, indeed," replied Albert Maurice, "and so have we! But that matters not. We will lead them safely through. But now tell me--How was the Duke of Gueldres won to our wishes? He owes his freedom as much to Imbercourt as to any one. Is he then so base a slave as he has been pictured? Is the soil of his heart really so fertile in weeds, that good service produces nothing thence but ingratitude?"